SCHROON LAKE — Seagle Music Colony will hold a ground-breaking ceremony to kick off construction of a new nine bedroom faculty and staff housing unit on its Schroon Lake campus. The ceremony will take place at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, July 14, at 999 Charley Hill Road. The new housing unit is part of the first phase of an overall campus improvement plan at Seagle Music Colony that will eventually restore or replace many of the aging structures used by the Colony during its now 101 year history. The housing unit construction has been partially funded by a grant from the New York State Regional Economic Development Council. New York State Senator Betty Little as well as Assemblyman Dan Stec will be present at the ground-breaking as representatives of the state. The project has also gained additional support from the Charles R. Wood Foundation. The remainder of the construction costs will be funded by individual supporters of the not-for-profit Seagle Music Colony. “This summer we had to retire one of our old cabins that had served beyond its useful lifetime,” said Seagle Music Colony General Director Tony Kostecki. "We have our faculty and staff tucked into every available space now and are literally busting at the seams when it comes to available beds on campus. This new building will not only accommodate our current housing needs, but serve us well into the future as we continue to grow our world-renowned program.” A full campus revitalization plan is currently being formalized by the Seagle Music Colony administration and Board of Directors that will serve the Colony in its next 100 years. The plan will include additional new housing for artists and staff, a dining and gathering hall with a commercial kitchen, improvements to the grounds and pathways as well as a new state-of-the-art theater to supplement the existing Oscar Seagle Memorial Theater. “We are formulating an 8 to 10 year strategic plan to try to implement all these improvements and are excited about the future, though we have a long way to go and a lot of money to raise to make our vision a reality”, says Kostecki. The mission of Seagle Music Colony is to identify, train and develop gifted singers and to present quality opera and musical theatre performances to the public. More information about Seagle Music Colony, including a full listing of its summer events and performances, can be found online at seaglecolony.org.

ROOST board member Laura O’Brien and her husband Matt have taken on one of the most challenging jobs in the area — running a small family ski slope and making it profitable. But they’ve made huge strides in diversifying their options at Oak Mountain in Speculator, and hopefully they will be there for many years to come. Laura is originally from New Hampshire, and she earned a fine arts degree at Montana State University in Bozeman, then she earned a graduate degree from the University of Nebraska. She and Matt met while working at Sugarbush Resort in Vermont, then they started running a camp store at Moffitt Beach in the summers while working ski slopes in Park City, Utah, in the winters. At the time, they didn’t even realize there was a ski slope in Speculator. But after a few years, the mayor of Speculator, aware of their background in working at ski resorts in both the west and the east, approached them to run Oak Mountain Ski Center. And they quickly fell in love with it. The village couldn’t afford to keep them on after some time, so they moved on to Maine’s Sunday River, but then the Hamilton County Industrial Development Agency approached them to see if they wanted to bid on the ski slope. After a year-long process of submitting various operational plans, budgets, and other documents, the O’Briens were the owners of Oak Mountain Ski Center. “It’s just been a blast,” Laura said. Over the last few years, they have grown skier visits by nearly 90 percent, from 8,000 when they were running the center for the village to 15,000 in their best season. (The most recent ski season was far from their best, but it wasn’t just Oak — it was a trend seen throughout ski slopes in the U.S. Laura is confident the coming winter will be awesome, though!) Laura and Matt have expanded snowmaking and put some oomph into the ski center’s marketing efforts, trying to focus in on who their customers are and reach out to that segment of the popular better to help build their customer base. They have also focused on improving the experience in their lodges, doing renovations, painting, and making things look better. The lodge now also includes the Acorn Pub and Eatery, a restaurant with delicious eats cooked up by Chef Lou Petrozza, who was a season 4 finalist on Gordon Ramsey’s Hell’s Kitchen TV show. “People just love him, and of course they love his food, because it’s amazing,” Laura said. Oak also recently took over ski rentals, now offering brand new Rossignol skis. The O’Briens have also taken efforts to expand their summer offerings, trying out a disc golf course and downhill mountain biking trails. The idea is to make sure there’s something for everyone, no matter what time of year a family visits Oak. They also tried mini golf under a tent, but there wasn’t much interest in that. Laura said they like to try things here and there to see what sticks, and if it sticks, like mountain biking has, they will expand it. If it doesn’t, well, the mini-golf course is currently for sale. When they’re not working on their business, Laura loves to spend time with Matt and their daughter and son, and their black lab. Laura loves the outdoors and can often be found hiking, paddleboarding, snowboarding, skiing, and otherwise exploring the woods and waters of the Adirondacks. Laura has also been involved in efforts to improve Speculator and the surrounding area, and she helped with a destination planning co mmittee ROOST facilitated. Last year, she was offered a seat on the ROOST board, and she said, “Heck yeah, whatever I can do to help out this area and make us more well known is great.” She notes that the small businesses of Hamilton County have seen significant impacts from ROOST’s marketing efforts already, and she hopes ROOST will continue to grow its efforts to bring more awareness and tourism to the area. For more information about Oak Mountain, like them on Facebook or visit their website.

Please read this note from ANCA and fill out their survey! Dear North Country resident, business owner, visitor: You know it when you get there... Main Street buildings are well maintained. There are people on the sidewalks, young families, galleries, dogs, a cool-looking coffee place, buckets of flowers, the place where a weekly farmers market sets up, a tangible buzz. You can feel it. You want to join in. You wonder how this community does it. The Adirondack North Country Association (ANCA) is reaching out to YOU to take a minute to fill out our survey, “Unpacking Secrets of Successful Communities.” These survey questions are based on successful strategies from around the country. We recognize that national trends are driving against economic viability in rural places and rural communities, but some of our Adirondack North Country communities are bucking those trends. We want to understand how and why. Results from this brief survey will be instrumental for building a highly relevant and comprehensive agenda for ANCA’s annual meeting in September. Results from the meeting, in turn, will be used to create tools for individual communities to learn from each other and explore new ways to invigorate their own towns and villages. We want to know what you think! We need to hear voices from all over Northern New York. Beyond knowing your feedback will help shape economic development tools for the North Country, we are adding the extra incentive of FREE COFFEE! New and independently owned coffee shops throughout the region are donating gift certificates for a drawing of survey participants. You could be a winner! So please take the survey, enter the coffee shop drawing, and help ANCA help North Country communities. Best wishes, The ANCA Team

Sarah Wilson’s family is steeped in the local tourism economy, with a background in lodging and relatives who run restaurants and rent houses. But she’s a marketing pro with experience that reaches beyond the local economy, making her a great complement to the rest of the ROOST board. Sarah grew up moving around frequently due to her father’s Air Force career, but she attended and graduated high school in Lake Placid. After college, she did everything from volunteer for the Peace Corps in Africa to working on Wall Street. She also ran marketing and public relations for the Stowe Area Association for some time, doing work similar to what ROOST has done in the past. For the last eight years, Sarah has lived in Keene and she has been running her own boutique marketing consultancy practice, Sarah Wilson Business Communications. It focuses on PR for books, but also includes some other work like digital and social media campaigns. Most of her work is based in New York City and California, so she works out of her home office, then heads to the city every month or six weeks or so to meet with clients. Because her business is not tied to the local tourism economy, Sarah is great for giving a different perspective from our other board members, many of whom operate small local businesses. Though she notes that many of the solutions she uses in her business are relevant to local businesses here as well. Sarah was excited and honored when she was asked to join the ROOST board. She was familiar with ROOST’s work from her time at the Stowe Area Association as well as when she worked at Adworkshop, and she was a fan of ROOST’s approach to marketing the region. She had watched the organization grow and evolve over time, and she was always happy to see that it is an agile organization that is savvy in its marketing strategies. She believes ROOST has done a great job staying ahead of the many changes in the world of marketing, being at the forefront of the shift to content marketing years ago, before it became standard procedure, as well as the shifts to social media, mobile, and video as tools for marketing. Sarah, who was recently appointed to be chair of the ROOST board's Marketing Committee, hopes ROOST will continue to lead the local community and the region by being a strong tourism marketing partner, and by focusing closely on its mission.